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The RPG Pathfinder: Kingmaker is out today from Owlcat Games and Deepsilver, sadly the Linux version has some critical bugs.

GOG provided me with a key, so at release today I went to download it only to find no Linux download. When speaking to my GOG contact, they confirmed a critical bug was found where the game will completely crash if you try to load a saved game. This is also confirmed by users on the Steam forum. Due to this, there's no ETA on GOG having any Linux build available and I can't blame them for that, this is down to Owlcat Games to solve.

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Issues as major as that at launch really do make me sad. Linux isn't a top platform sure, but to release with such a major flaw as that? Seems like it's not the only major issue too, I won't list them all but it's safe to say it's a very rough release.

Shame, I was really looking forward to this one. The way they described the depth of the lore and gameplay mechanics had me pretty intrigued by it.

Available from GOG, Humble Store and Steam. Not that I recommend buying a mostly broken product, wait until they fix it. I will take a proper look when it is working, hopefully it won't take them long to fix.

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Avehicle7887 Sep 27, 2018
Quoting: crazyeyesI can't help but notice that the method chain on the lower levels is named "Save." Could it possibly be that a thread is saving for some reason at the same time the file is being loaded?

The game does do that and and now I have the faint suspect it's probably the reason why it crashes. Upon a successful load it does automaticalky save again.

Not sure why it's working for some people though. Removing that save at load might just be the fix.
NovenTheHero Sep 27, 2018
I can confirm that this bug exists. The game runs beautifully otherwise. Is there a way to install the Windows version and run it through Steam Play?
slaapliedje Sep 27, 2018
I'm thinking I'll buy this as soon as the issues with it crashing are fixed, but man I have so many RPGs to play and not enough time to play them...
TheSHEEEP Sep 27, 2018
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The save game issues are supposedly fixed now, though the others probably persist.
Ardje Sep 28, 2018
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: recioalexOn the steam forums, 1 hour ago the devs said there will be a patch for this on 8 hours "We're not leaving the office until this is solved. "
That does make them sound good, but let's remember issues like this are there because enough testing simply wasn't done. Frankly, loading it up once on Linux would have shown them the issues.
It's not that easy...
The developer might already have it running with a working savegame, and maybe not having any savegame at all is the problem. Once a savegame is created it might work.
I think it is good that they released it on Linux too, even with these bugs.
It shows they want to have it on Linux. Also that they are working hard to fix it is good too.
The problem is studio's need bigger testing audience that can really restart and play the game from beginning to finish.
I know exactly one developer that really plays his game from beginning to some end livestreaming and swearing. It takes him almost a month to run through it. The linux version is just an export for him.
And he has yet another update of his game (Fortresscraft Evolved, developer DJ Arcas/ProjectorGames).
The downside is that nightlies and beta builds are not exported, because to him, creating the export is easy, but to get two different platform versions correctly uploaded into steam is a big nuisance.
If anybody has a hint on how to automate that correctly for a primarily dotnet windows developer...
Ardje Sep 28, 2018
Quoting: TheSHEEEP
Quoting: liamdaweApparently the Linux bug wasn't as easy to solve as they thought. Might be waiting a while.
Which just showcases that probably absolutely nobody tested this game on linux prior to release.
Absurd, really. If you cannot test a build at all before release, don't release it yet...

I had enough bugs hunting me for months that work perfectly fine on my testing platform, but yet in production it seemed to creep up. It was very hard to find, I had to plough through megabytes of straces that I obtained through wonky uplinks.

No amount of unit testing or stress testing would have revealed that bug. And in my case I had complete control over platform and kernels. There were no hidden gotchas.

Now expand that to numerous of different linux platforms, filesystems, kernels, drivers, libraries.

The only thing that can be said is that there was not enough testing done by the beta testers to hit these snags.
jedinja Sep 28, 2018
And has anyone experienced the game not loading at all. just freezing with the fancy in-game cursor?
daishord Sep 28, 2018
Maybe too early to ask - but is it any fun? Skimming Steam reviews one theme is "the DM hates me" though this is "only" balancing. Mostly I'm intrigued by the RPG+city building/strategy aspect but this seems to be hard to do right - e.g. PoE's stronghold management felt (for me) always tacked on without really fitting with the rest of the game.
Alm888 Sep 28, 2018
Quoting: ArdjeThe only thing that can be said is that there was not enough testing done by the beta testers to hit these snags.
Did it have Linux beta test at all? I doubt it.
TheSHEEEP Sep 28, 2018
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Quoting: Ardje
Quoting: TheSHEEEP
Quoting: liamdaweApparently the Linux bug wasn't as easy to solve as they thought. Might be waiting a while.
Which just showcases that probably absolutely nobody tested this game on linux prior to release.
Absurd, really. If you cannot test a build at all before release, don't release it yet...

I had enough bugs hunting me for months that work perfectly fine on my testing platform, but yet in production it seemed to creep up. It was very hard to find, I had to plough through megabytes of straces that I obtained through wonky uplinks.

No amount of unit testing or stress testing would have revealed that bug. And in my case I had complete control over platform and kernels. There were no hidden gotchas.

Now expand that to numerous of different linux platforms, filesystems, kernels, drivers, libraries.
That is nothing but apologism.
If you control both platform and kernel, then the problem can obviously not lie in either.

Which is the exact opposite of their problem, which was that NOBODY (at least I haven't read a single report of anyone who did NOT have the bug) on linux (or at least its most used distro) was able to get save games working.
That the fix is already out after barely 24 hours shows that this was a simple to solve bug, supporting my point even more.

A single person using a recent Ubuntu (and not a VM) testing the game would have been enough. Nothing fell through any "cracks" in the testing environment, except if you consider not having a recent Ubuntu setup a "crack".

I'm a programmer myself, and I think you do us an extreme disservice by trying to sugarcoat incompetence and put it all on the testers. After all, you can't blame the testers if nobody told them to test on linux.
This bug could have been found by any developer who tested his own build appropriately.

My guess? They used a build server to cover the linux build, fixing only bugs that caused a build failure and rarely or never actually ran the linux version.

I'd say it's all good now, but there are still so many bugs left and the game seems to be plagued with absurd difficulty scaling (level 2 parties facing enemies with 40AC and nonsense like that)... it's such a shame, really. Once patched properly, the game must be really good. But I don't think that will happen before the end of October - and by then they'll be lucky if the ratings don't drop below 60%.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 28 September 2018 at 1:09 pm UTC
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